Apopka Offers Winter Park Bricks In Exchange For Work

April 21, 1985|By Lauren Ritchie of The Sentinel Staff

APOPKA — City council members in Apopka are offering city officials in Winter Park a deal.

If Winter Park crews will re-lay a brick street in Apopka, that city will give Winter Park enough bricks to finish about half of a library parking project that was halted when the city ran out of bricks.

Winter Park commissioners are scheduled to consider the offer Monday during a work session.

The deal was the idea of Apopka public works director Rod Stroupe, who has been reluctant to recommend re-laying bricks on Orange Street because of the cost.

Winter Park City Manager David Harden, who lives on Orange Street in Apopka, said Winter Park public works director Jim Williams will recommend that the commissioners accept Apopka's offer.

Harden said Winter Park laid brick driveways at its library built in 1979 and used paving blocks with holes in them for parking areas. He said the city was told that grass would grow in the holes in the blocks but it hasn't.

Now the library board wants to make the parking area brick. About one- fourth to one-third of the parking lot had been done when the city ran out of bricks.

Harden said the city would get 30,000 bricks in return for re-laying about 40 percent of Orange Street. That is enough bricks to complete another one-third to one-half of the library project, he said.

He said Winter Park has an expert bricklaying crew that can re-lay Orange Street in about four weeks. That will cost Winter Park slightly less than $10,000. The cost of the bricks, at 25 cents each, would be $7,500 if the city bought them.

Apopka officials have been debating about what to do with several brick streets since mid-March.

Residents on McGee and Mason streets favored paving over the bricks. Some neighbors on Orange Street wanted to preserve the historic atmosphere of the area, which has seven Victorian homes built in the 1880s and 1890s.

Stroupe said laying asphalt over the bricks would cost about $3,000. If Apopka crews re-lay 40 percent of the street, it would cost the city $10,500, he estimated.